In growing suburban markets across the country stand signs that read, "Coming Soon: Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse." And more likely than not, just across the street from each of these blue beacons, an orange billboard declares: "Future Home of Home Depot."

For years, real estate has reaped the spoils of retail warfare. From fast food restaurants to gas stations to electronics stores, retail outlets tend to cluster together and slug it out for customers.

But perhaps nowhere has this been quite so pronounced as in the hyper-competitive hardware war now raging between Lowe's and Home Depot. Battles across the country often result in the chains placing stores practically adjacent to one another, each offering 130,000-plus square feet of home improvement shopping.

For now, Home Depot holds the title as hardware king, with 1,029 U.S. stores at the end of last year. At that time, Lowe's operated only 650 stores nationwide.

Yet both chains have embarked on aggressive expansion plans largely focused on growing suburban neighborhoods. According to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Lowe's plans to open 115 to 120 new stores this year, while Home Depot hopes to add about 200 new locations.

In fact, the two chains are opening up so many new stores that they are cannibalizing sales at their existing locations. In other words, new Home Depot outlets are stealing away sales from older Home Depot stores. Home Depot estimates that this phenomenon can reduce existing-store sales by up to 30 percent.

So what does this mean for real estate? Well, for some landowners in suburban locations, it can mean a bonanza.

Right down the street in my bustling suburban neighborhood, both Home Depot and Lowe's have broken ground. One week last month, a sign popped up announcing a 135,000 square-foot Lowe's. The next week, right across the street and fronting the same highway access road, appeared a sign announcing a 140,000 square-foot Home Depot.

Ground for both stores already has been broken as they race to see who can have a grand opening party the soonest. One fortunate landowner, who once farmed the corners in question, owned both sides of the street. He has benefited from retail game theory by capturing big payments from both competitors.

It's long been a rule of commercial real estate to watch McDonald's. The fast-food chain's real estate analysts -- say some -- are masters at being early buyers of what in-the-future will be extremely valuable retail sites.

The same can be said about the hardware wars. Figure out the hardware moguls' formula for buying real estate and you just might make a land-flip killing.

After all, the hardware chains often end up competing for the same land with other big-box retailers as well as malls and movie theaters, said John Simley, spokesman for Home Depot.

"When we are looking at a location for a new store, we look at a lot of different marketing data," Simley said. "Much of this information is gleaned from sales at existing stores. We look at zip codes on credit cards used at existing stores to find out where our customers are coming from. Sometimes there is tremendous demand from places where we don't have a store.

"Once we have established excess demand, we start looking at good roads, access and zoning, combined with population density and the number of homes in an area," he added. "What really matters is where the people are coming from. It's purely a response to growth."

In other words, it's all about marketing. This, of course, is not surprising to most commercial real estate brokers. But cracking the hardware marketing code can be worth millions if it's done in time. "Areas that tend to see these stores popping up right next door to each other usually are experiencing very high growth," said David Urban, professor of marketing at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Business in Richmond. "There is a bet on the part of these stores that the area will be able to support them both."

So why do these stores choose to be right across the street from one another, rather than bet on diverse locations? For one, their marketing and demographic experts must hail from the same business school. Urban explains it this way:

"If you have competitor out there and you're not close by, you are in essence ceding the territory to that competitor. You want to capture as much of area as you can. It might be worth it to be in there and not let them have all the bloom off the rose."

Each time one of these competitors ups ante in their turf war, however, the real winner might be the owner of the turf.

For more articles by Lesley Hensell, please press here.